ERA OF THE STATUTE THEORY 25

application. To this end -they classified each law according
as it concerned a person or a thing, and in the result evolved
the following doctrine:

First, all statutes are either real, personal or mixed. A real statute is
one whose principal object is to regulate things, a personal statute is one
that chiefly concerns persons, while a mixed statute is one that concerns
acts, such as the formation of a contract, rather than a person or a thing.1

Secondly, these three categories of statute differ in their field of appli-
cation. Real statutes are essentially territorial. They apply exclusively
with regard to immovables within the territory of the enacting
sovereign, but they never apply in places outside that territory.2
Personal statutes, on the other hand, apply only to persons domiciled
within the territorial jurisdiction of the enacting sovereign,- but they
remain so applicable even within the jurisdiction of another territorial
sovereign. A personal statute of Florence overrides a Bolognese
personal statute if a Florentine does business in Bologna, provided that
the business does not relate to something that falls within the scope of
a real or a mixed statute* Mixed statutes apply to all acts done in the
country of the enacting sovereign, even though they raise litigation in
another country.

At first sight this classification of laws appears to afford a Difficulty
simple and effective solution, but the moment that we attempt !^^1"
to discover from the post-glossators what statutes are real and real from
what personal we meet with, the utmost confusion. The truth
is, of course, that the problem is insoluble. Is, for instance,
a law which regulates one's capacity to transfer land to be
classified as personal because it concerns persons, or as real
because it affects land? Some jurists in dealing with the subject
of capacity distinguished between favourable and onerous
statutes. The incapacity of infancy, for instance, which might
be regarded as favourable, was to follow the person affected no
matter where he went, but a law which made a person incapable
of succeeding to property, being onerous, must cease to apply
outside the territory of the legislator. Bartolus seems to have
made the distinction between real and personal laws turn upon
the grammatical construction of the enactment. A statute is
real if things are mentioned first, e.g. Bona decedentium veniant
in primogenitum; personal, if persons occupy the first place, e.g.
Primogenitus succedat in omnibus relus?

1 Some jurists defined a mixed statute as one which affected both persons and
things.

2 Statutes relating to movables were personal, mobilia sequuntur personam\
Wolff, p. 24.

3 According to Beale, Conflict of Laws, pp. 1890-1, this was merely *an